Student Blogging Project - John Kennedy Elementary School

4th and 45h Grade

The purpose of this project is to involve teachers and students in online publishing, and to raise awareness of how blogging can improve student writing, and motivate writers to be more skilled at their craft.  It will showcase student writing to a larger audience,. as well as allow our students to become content creators.  This will also prepare them for the challenges they will face as the Internet develops as a more collaborative, self constructed platform.

To accomplish this, the LMS will approach fourth and fifth grade teachers in the school about beginning a blogging project where students will write posts to a blog on weekly basis either on an assigned topic (which would be writing that they are already doing for Literacy Block and Writer's Workshop) or free choice.  This writing can be done from school during the library instructional time, or in the classroom during Literacy Block, or from home.  In addition, students will be encourage to read blogs of other classrooms within the school, as well as within the Classblogmeister network, and to write appropriate responses to other student's blog posts.

The Library currently uses the Classblogmeister site, and the individual students will be added to the library or blog, or the LMS will help the classroom teacher create their own blogs.

Tool utilized:  Classblogmeister website.  This site was chosen as it is fully moderated by the teacher.  Every posting, addition, and comment runs through the teacher before becoming public.

Miieditor - for creating avatars for each student;  these can be saved and uploaded to each Classblogmeister student site.

ClustrMap - added to each blog homepage so that students and staff can get an idea of where the views and posts are coming from.

Required:  Every student has a signed web publishing policy required by Batavia City Schools to publish their work on the web.

The initial challenge will occur in introducing this project to teachers.  It is important that they do not perceive this project as an "add-on", but as a more effective method and venue for student writing.  If the maintenance of student blogs can become part of everyday work, it can truly have an impact on student writing.  We will also be sending home a letter to parents explaining the project and encouraging them to read their student's work (and the work of other students), as well as posting comments. 

Follow up:  As negotiated with each fourth and fifth grade teacher, the LMS will maintain the blog and student postings and comments for each student maintained under the library page.  The LMS will also serve as support to help teachers who choose to set up their own blog, and have their student's blogs associated on their own blog page.